You should write the BIOS backup file to a floppy disk. Below we show the most commom procedures for AMI, Award and Phoenix BIOS using the original BIOS manufacturer software, but as we said, it can be slightly different depending on the software version. The exact option to do that depends on the software version used and if you are using the BIOS manufacturer software or the “special” motherboard manufacturer software. Just perform the BIOS upgrade procedure and tell the programming software to write your current BIOS to a file. Read our tutorial “ How to Find Out Your Motherboard’s Manufacturer and Model” for further information. But you will need to know your motherboard manufacturer and go to its download section on the internet. In this case, you can use the motherboard manufacturer software instead of the AMI, Award or Phoenix software. Some motherboard manufacturers have their own BIOS upgrade software, usually Windows-based. You will need to boot from this floppy, since the BIOS upgrading program does not run under Windows (you may also need to change boot sequence on setup to allow booting from the floppy disk). You need to unzip the downloaded file and copy the uncompressed file to a bootable floppy disk (formated with Format a:/s). For Award or Phoenix BIOS, click here to download the software (Phoenix has bought Award, so you have to use Phoenix software on Award BIOS) this link will open a list with many versions of this software, try the latest one.

Just pay attention to what appears on your computer screen just after you turn it on the BIOS manufacturer name will be shortly displayed (see an example in Figure 1).įigure 1: Example of a computer with BIOS from Award.įor AMI BIOS, click here to download the software.

First you will need to know your BIOS company, which can be AMI, Award or Phoenix. To backup your BIOS, you will need to run the BIOS upgrade software to read BIOS contents to a file. With that we won’t be able to load the operating system and we can’t even reprogram BIOS in order it starts to operate again. What happens actually is that there are viruses – the best known is the CIH (also known as Chernobyl or Spacefiller) – that are capable to erase BIOS content from PC and the machine will be inoperative, i.e., it will not be able to boot again. Quite often it can be interesting to back up PC’s BIOS, particularly before a BIOS upgrade, as you may recover BIOS old contents in case something goes wrong in the process, and your PC will operate correctly again.

Save bios settings to usb